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Friday, May 13, 2011

Mishmash

Hi there, readers.
Blogger’s been down a bit lately, so I haven’t been able to post as much in the last few days. I’ve got a couple of things I wanted to talk about and now I have to the chance to do so. Here goes!

So yesterday, we (my mom, my brother, and I) were cleaning out the back room, and I was asked to erase my story from off the board.

Yes, that one. From way back in February. To see the actual story, click here.
If any of you don’t know about what happens when something is not erased from a whiteboard for nearly 3 months, let me tell you. It sticks to the board, and takes a lot of erasing to go away. And since I had a lot of story on the board, I was erasing for a while. Which gave me plenty of time to think about how I never actually posted any edits for the stories I did for PBM. This was partially because I though people were sick of reading about PBM, and partially because I only editied one story. If you remember, I had a poll up for which stories I would revise first. The winner was Untitled So Far (about a dragon infestation and a young man who decides to do something about it) with 3 votes (42%). So I edited that in April. And here it is:

In the town of ___________, there was an infestation problem. But this wasn’t an infestation of rats, or bugs, or bees. No, this was an infestation of dragons. [Picture: many swooping dragons, villagers running in fear, village being destroyed.]
Well, there was only one dragon really, but one dragon can be an infestation all by itself if it decides to be destructive. He could burn houses, carry off maidens, steal gold, or just be a general nuisance [Picture: Narrator in front of frame, same pic but w/out ruined village, calm villagers, only 1 dragon]
In ________ there lived a young man named Frederick. Like many of the other residents, he was unhappy with the dragon problem. But unlike the other residents, he decided to do something about it. [Picture: Frederick knocking on witch’s door. Forest behind, dark.]
He went to the local witch and asked for help to get rid of the dragon. Luckily, she didn’t turn him into a toad and decided to grant his request. So she gave him a sword and three gold pieces and sent him home to kill the dragon.[Picture: Witch giving gold and sword to Frederick]
So Frederick went home, but not being the brightest young man, he gave the three gold pieces and the sword to the first youth he met and told him to go slay the dragon. [Picture: Frederick next to youth1, pointing, youth holding sword and gold]
The youth left the next morning in the direction of the dragon’s cave and never returned. [Picture: Youth silhouette in distance, big sky, cliffs and cave]
So Frederick went back to the witch and asked for her help again. Again she gave him three gold pieces and a sword and sent him home to kill the dragon. [Picture: Witch looking slightly annoyed, handing over gold and sword]
But Frederick hadn’t gotten any smarter since the last time he went to see the witch, so again he went to the first youth he saw and gave him the gold pieces and the sword and told him to go slay the dragon. The youth left the next morning in the direction of the dragon’s cave and never returned. [Picture: Youth2 waving goodbye, has backpack, big sky, cliffs and cave]
Frederick decided to go again to the witch and ask for help. By this time, the witch was getting annoyed that he kept coming back, so this time she gave him the sword without the three gold pieces, and told him to go slay the dragon himself. [Picture: Witch really annoyed, pointing toward door]
So he didn’t bother waiting for the morning, but went that night and slayed the dragon while it was asleep. [Picture: Frederick slaying dragon, big night sky, ground far below, hoard glitters in background, darkness except moonlight around Frederick, some light on dragon]
The next day he went to the witch to thank her. By this time she was really annoyed at him and didn’t ever want to see him again. [Picture: Frederick bowing, thanking witch, witch angry.]
So she turned him into a toad. The end.[Picture: Frederick as toad, "the end" in scripty writing at bottom of page.]

It obviously still needs quite a bit of work, but I think it’s a lot better than it was. Anyway, then I started thinking about illustrations. But the only dragon I drew that turned out half-decent was the one I doodled on the front of my draft of Rudolph and Isadora (one of the stories I’m co-writing on my other blog, The Bookbird and the Wordgirl), which, coincidentally, also has a dragon in it.

In other news, I read a great graphic novel yesterday that I want to write a review for in the next couple of hours.

I had more to talk about, but being silly, I didn't think to write them down, and I've forgotten everything I wanted to say at this point. If I remember, I'll edit this post and put it in.